An electronic survey of Control Design readers was conducted in December 2013 in order to identify usage and application trends of sensors and vision among the industrial machine builders that comprise Control Design's readership.

The use of hardwiring to connect sensors to I/O points was most commonly indicated with nearly 53% of respondents using hardwiring. Nearly 15% report using I/O-Link, 11.5% indicated Ethernet/Ethernet variant and a further 11.5% device-level digital network, and 9.8% report using serial 232/422/485.